Is a HDD that survived ~1m fall still okay for storage

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:12 am

A hard drive fell out of one of my cases when I was reinstalling some drives. Time to get out the handkerchiefs folks: it was quite a sad moment

. Thankfully, it was an older system drive which was non-critical and nearing retirement at the time. (I had wisely backed up the critical data on a separate drive.) It fell from a considerable height--maybe 800mm or more--and crashed onto the (uncarpeted, non-cushioning!) floor. You could imagine my utter devastation. I had to take it to the Emergency Unit.

I ran several disk checking utilities including a full error scan in HD Tune. They all reported an error free disk in good health. Huh?! I expected a thousand disk errors to appear after such a heavy crash. Not a single red (damaged) square: it was green (ok) from start to finish

.

Now that it's made such a quick recovery and out of the emergency ward..... Would the drive still be okay to store critical data, since it appears to have survived any serious injury? Or is it just a "calm before the storm" and there really has been detrimental internal long term damage that cannot be easily determined by software utilities?

I want to use it as an as an occasional backup drive. If it isn't worth taking the risk with my data, then I will just send it in for recycling.

new2spcr · Post by **new2spcr** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:51 am

Shamgar wrote:A hard drive fell out of one of my cases when I was reinstalling some drives. Time to get out the handkerchiefs folks: it was quite a sad moment . Thankfully, it was an older system drive which was non-critical and nearing retirement at the time. (I had wisely backed up the critical data on a separate drive.) It fell from a considerable height--maybe 800mm or more--and crashed onto the (uncarpeted, non-cushioning!) floor. You could imagine my utter devastation. I had to take it to the Emergency Unit.

I ran several disk checking utilities including a full error scan in HD Tune. They all reported an error free disk in good health. Huh?! I expected a thousand disk errors to appear after such a heavy crash. Not a single red (damaged) square: it was green (ok) from start to finish .

Now that it's made such a quick recovery and out of the emergency ward..... Would the drive still be okay to store critical data, since it appears to have survived any serious injury? Or is it just a "calm before the storm" and there really has been detrimental internal long term damage that cannot be easily determined by software utilities?

I want to use it as an as an occasional backup drive. If it isn't worth taking the risk with my data, then I will just send it in for recycling.

Storage is cheap. I wouldn't trust a drive that took a hit like that especially for back up purposes.. I wouldn't trust a single, new drive either - I always have at least 2 drives with mirrored data.
Perhaps you can use the drive as an experimental OS-drive? Like trying out Linux on it for example?

DanceMan · Post by **DanceMan** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 1:52 pm

Run the manufacturer's test utility. UBCD has all of them. If it passes, use it.

Don't waste your time with half measures like scandisk.

Seagate's Seatools will often work on other brands.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:19 pm

If HD Tune error scan is clean and SMART says there aren't any bad or relocated sectors you got away with it.

But drop or no drop there is no hard drive you should trust critical data to. If it is truly critical you need multiple copies of it.

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 6:30 pm

It may be fine. Who knows how many times our unboxed OEM hard drives have fallen in the warehouse before they are shipped to us. And shipping can be a pretty wild time too.

As others have said, always back up important data, even if the drive is "trusted".

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:30 pm

to be honest, my drives can take a fall. laptop drives, not so much, but the platter on a normal hard drive is about ~2-3mm thick, and they don't break as easily as one might think.

as it's been said, try out UBCD, and if that says it's ok, just make a backup of the data if you need it, and keep using the drive...i've had my computer fall off a car seat one time, and to be honest, it's absolutely fine...i was scared at the time, but realistically, unless it sounds like a baby's rattle, there's nothing wrong with it.

RoGuE · Post by **RoGuE** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:47 pm

if it passed smart scan and error checking..its fine. you didn't tell us what type of drive it is...I know many WD drives are good up to 500G becasue they park the heads before they turn off. By parking the heads off the platters, it brings down the risk of shock failure, and I'm betting that may have saved you...

anyways..I agree with everyone else here..keep using the drive, but make sure u back up data u cant live without (something you should do anyways).

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:27 pm

Yeah, if you ever look at the specs the running G limits might be 3 or something...but 500G's they can handle when powered off. Like what you get dropping it off a table

I second the experimental idea...or non-critical backups maybe.

Torajirou · Post by **Torajirou** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:11 am

I will never trust a single HDD for storage anyway.

It will eventually fail someday. Then you have to pray that you migrate the data before it does. That's as scary as Russian roulette for me.

Redundancy is the way to go IMHO.

new2spcr · Post by **new2spcr** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 3:38 am

josephclemente wrote:It may be fine. Who knows how many times our unboxed OEM hard drives have fallen in the warehouse before they are shipped to us. And shipping can be a pretty wild time too.

So true. Not all manufacturers care much about ESD protection either. When I got my Samsung drive, it came all naked inside a single transparent clam-style plastic case. No ESD protection, no protecting sponge. When I asked the shop about this crappy way of packaging, they said that's the way the got the drives from Samsung.

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 5:50 am

Thanks for the replies. I should have mentioned the HDD in question. It's a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 40GB. I have since replaced it with a Samsung HM160HI 2.5" and WD6400AAKS 3.5". My critical data has been backed up to these drives, however, I still don't trust them as much as my old Seagate. Don't ask me why; it's just a gut feeling.

As others have said, who knows how many times a drive has taken a hit before getting to us!

I might try using it as a Linux testing drive instead of critical storage. I'll get a small flash drive for my work files and another desktop drive for media storage.

On a side but related note:
If all common storage media are not very reliable for long term storage and will all eventually fail, then what is the best solution for storing all our digital data? I could buy several HDDs or a combination of HDD/Flash Memory/DVD/SSD, but what if they all fail? What other choice do we have for our critical data which is mostly digital nowadays? I have creative work and digital camera photos going back 11 years stored on my drives, they are impossible to replace (unlike music, software and webpage downloads) and it would be devastating to lose any of it

.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 8:31 am

I think two hard drives, from different manufacturers, made at different time, stored at two different locations (a drawer at work, for instance, to protect against a house fire/burglary) should be reasonably safe. It won't protect you from both drives failing while off at the same time, a city-wide EMP, a nuke or a meteorite hit. However, as long as you spin them up regularly, keep the content up to date, monitor the health, and replace them immediately after death or severe injury, you should be reasonably okay.

Of course, the more independent off-site back-ups, the better, and various internet cloud storage services might be tempting, but creative work has a funny tendency of running into GBs, which might not be very fun to maintain at North America consumer internet speeds, or paying for.

new2spcr · Post by **new2spcr** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 11:46 am

qviri wrote:However, as long as you spin them up regularly

One has to spin them up regularly?

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 2:35 pm

new2spcr wrote:
qviri wrote:However, as long as you spin them up regularly
One has to spin them up regularly?

I don't know. I recall reading somewhere that it's not particularly healthy to let drives sit unused for extended periods of time. I imagine fluid bearing drives have at least a potential for problems with the fluid partially drying up or losing its mechanical properties if not used for years, especially in tougher ambient conditions. However, I will freely admit I do not remember where I read it, and I haven't thought about or explored the science involved in any considerable depth.

Spinning it up also lets you check if SMART is raising any flags.

If you're looking at regularly adding to or amending the back-up, the question is academic. For unchanging back-ups of older data, you'd have to look a deeper whether idling until data format is nearly obsolete or regular spin-ups are better.

lm · Post by lm » Sun Jul 12, 2009 5:11 pm

qviri wrote:
new2spcr wrote:
qviri wrote:However, as long as you spin them up regularly
One has to spin them up regularly?
I don't know. I recall reading somewhere that it's not particularly healthy to let drives sit unused for extended periods of time.

Isn't this precisely what happens after production before being bought and installed?

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 5:22 pm

Indeed. A couple of mitigating factors:

- usually the non-use period will be measured in weeks or months, not years
- drives will be in original packaging (with silica gel, sealed, etc), and hopefully in reasonably climate-controlled environment most of the time
- DOA does happen

I don't know of any inquiries into causes of death of DOA drives

To clarify, I'm not saying most drives wouldn't be okay withstanding a three-year idle - but that is also the case with being used every day for three years. If you want safe back-ups, the issue is might be something worth looking into.

danimal · Post by **danimal** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:07 pm

new2spcr wrote: So true. Not all manufacturers care much about ESD protection either. When I got my Samsung drive, it came all naked inside a single transparent clam-style plastic case. No ESD protection, no protecting sponge. When I asked the shop about this crappy way of packaging, they said that's the way the got the drives from Samsung.

i've never received a drive that wasn't in a bag, and both of the samsungs that i have came in sealed static bags.

new2spcr · Post by **new2spcr** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:03 am

qviri wrote:
new2spcr wrote:
qviri wrote:However, as long as you spin them up regularly
One has to spin them up regularly?
I don't know. I recall reading somewhere that it's not particularly healthy to let drives sit unused for extended periods of time. I imagine fluid bearing drives have at least a potential for problems with the fluid partially drying up or losing its mechanical properties if not used for years, especially in tougher ambient conditions. However, I will freely admit I do not remember where I read it, and I haven't thought about or explored the science involved in any considerable depth.

Spinning it up also lets you check if SMART is raising any flags.

If you're looking at regularly adding to or amending the back-up, the question is academic. For unchanging back-ups of older data, you'd have to look a deeper whether idling until data format is nearly obsolete or regular spin-ups are better.

Interesting. Might be worth looking into it.
FWIW, I still have a 13.6 gig Quantum Fireball, 8 yrs old, that has been lying around untouched for many years until I decided to give it a spin - I experienced no problems at all. I also have a 2.1 gigabyte Seagate that was left untouched for many (don't remember how many!) years until I decided to install a *nix on it. No problems.

new2spcr · Post by **new2spcr** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:04 am

danimal wrote:
new2spcr wrote: So true. Not all manufacturers care much about ESD protection either. When I got my Samsung drive, it came all naked inside a single transparent clam-style plastic case. No ESD protection, no protecting sponge. When I asked the shop about this crappy way of packaging, they said that's the way the got the drives from Samsung.
i've never received a drive that wasn't in a bag, and both of the samsungs that i have came in sealed static bags.

Where do you live?

RoGuE · Post by **RoGuE** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 5:06 am

All Hdd's ive ever gotten have came in an ESD safe bag surrounded by hundreds of packing peanuts.

I live in the United States of America

Is a HDD that survived ~1m fall still okay for storage

Is a HDD that survived ~1m fall still okay for storage

Re: Is a HDD that survived ~1m fall still okay for storage